The subject matter described and/or illustrated herein relates generally to crimp tools, and more particularly, to hand-operated crimp tools.
Crimp tools are widely used for crimping a wide variety of workpieces. For example, crimp tools are used to crimp electrical terminals onto electrical conductors. Crimp tools include a crimp jaw having opposing jaw members for crimping the workpiece. One or both of the jaw members is driven toward the other to close the crimp jaw against the workpiece. Some crimp tools are manually operated using a user's hands. Such hand-operated crimp tools typically include a handle having a pair of arms that are squeezed together to close the crimp jaw of the tool. A user must exert a predetermined amount of force on the arms of the handle to squeeze the arms together; such force being commonly referred to as a “handle force”. As the arms of the handle are squeezed together, crimp tools often begin with a relatively low handle force when the arms are rather spread apart and build to a higher peak handle force as the arms come together to complete the crimp. In some circumstances, it may be desirable that a hand-operated crimp tool be capable of being operated using only a single hand of the user. For example, the user may need the other hand to perform other tasks and/or hold other items. Moreover, two-handed tools may be difficult to use in confined spaces.
The peak handle force of at least some known hand-operated crimp tools is undesirably high. For example, some peak handle forces require that a user use two hands to squeeze the arms of the handle together. Moreover, and for example, too high of a peak handle force can cause the user discomfort and/or injury. Hand injuries that may be caused by too high of a peak handle force include, but are not limited to, fatigue, stress-related injuries, repetitive motion injuries, joint and musculature injuries, and/or the like. One solution for reducing the peak handle force of crimp tools is to lengthen the arms of the handle and thereby provide a longer lever arm. But, the longer handle arms result in a larger and/or bulkier crimp tool, which may be difficult to use in confined spaces, carry around, and/or stow away. Moreover, the increased distance between the ends of the longer arms of the handle may make it difficult or impossible to use the crimp tool with only a single hand.
There is a need for providing a crimp tool with a lower peak handle force while maintaining or reducing the length of the arms of a handle of the crimp tool.